Payroll

[redneckofsc]

With the addition of Bourn, does anyone know where our current payroll sits at, and what rank overall it is? I could not find it anywhere, but I suck at the internet.

[peeker643]

With the addition of Bourn, does anyone know where our current payroll sits at, and what rank overall it is? I could not find it anywhere, but I suck at the internet.

$75.9million according to Sportrac.

http://www.spotrac.com/mlb/cleveland-in ... m-payroll/

ETA- Don't see guys like Kipnis, Chisenhall, Pestano, etc. Might be that they don't list guys still playing under rookie contracts/MLB minimums (and who aren't ARB eligible) but the remainder of the roster can't be a huge hit.

[dazindiansfanuk]

Tony Lastoria has it at just a tick below $83m taking into account the Major League Minimum guys, the salary being covered for Choo and the Hafner buyout.

http://www.indiansbaseballinsider.com/payroll

[Jumbo]

I don't think that the offical salary ranks for 2013 are up yet (I think they wait until opening day), but this is last year:

http://content.usatoday.com/sportsdata/baseball/mlb/salaries/team

It looks like a payroll around $80M fits in a crowded group of teams in like #17-22. So probably ranking round #20 in payroll is accurate. It's interesting though that last year's Indians were #21 at 78M. So they haven't needed to spend a lot of extra money to sign Swisher, Bourn(*), etc....they've just been replacing dead money including Pronk, Sizemore, and Fauxsto and reallocating Choo.

(*) Of course, Bourn's 2013 salary is $5M less than the contract AAV, so the payroll will automatically be a bit higher in the next few years.

[dazindiansfanuk]

I'm not sure those figures are right...... other publications (Cots, ESPN) had the Indians opening day payroll around $65m last year, not $78m.

[Jumbo]

You're right. I clicked through, and I saw what the error was: USA Today had the Indians with Lowe at $15M, even though they only paid a fraction of his salary. There might be similar errors elsewhere. $65M is probably more accurate, so there's been a legitimate increase.